Alternatives To Software Bloat
Some applications, such as Google Chrome and Winamp, package additional functionality in plug-ins, extensions or add-ons which are downloaded separately from the main application. These can be created by the software developer and often by third parties. Plug-ins enable extra functionality which might have otherwise been packaged in the main program.
Allowing extensions reduces the space used on any one machine, because even though the application plus the "plug-in interface" plus all the plug-ins is larger than the same functionality compiled into one monolithic application, it allows each user to install only the particular add-on features required by that user, rather than force every user to install a much larger monolithic application that includes 100% of the available features.
Open source software may use a similar technique using preprocessor directives to selectively include features at compile time. This is easier to implement than a plugin system, but has the disadvantage that a user who wants a specific set of features must compile the program from source.
Sometimes software becomes bloated because of "creeping featurism" (Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment), also called bullet-point engineering. One way to reduce that kind of bloat is described by the Unix philosophy: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well".
Read more about this topic: Software Bloat
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